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Associate Professor
Baylor College of Medicine
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
I have the expertise, leadership, training, expertise and motivation necessary to successfully carry out the proposed research project. My fascination for acoustic shockwaves as diagnostic and therapeutic application for biological tissues started close to decades ago out of a necessity. Current clinical tools to determine tissue damage are mostly imaging based and therefore require catastrophic failure of the tissue before damage can be detected. Acoustic vibration can be used as an alternative to radiographic evaluation and our cadaver based bone fracture studies have showed a tremendous advantage over radiographs in early detection of spinal tissue damage. Initial testing of an early prototype by NASA during their NEMO-6 mission was highly successful. In moving forward with the development of a commercial device, we started a collaboration with Activator Methods International on the Activator-V device as a platform for our diagnostic application. The Activator-V has become the most successful chiropractic instrument on the market for high velocity low amplitude spinal manipulation (HVLA-SM). Through another NASA based study, we identified frequency bandwidths that are ideal for osteoconduction versus muscle spindle stimulations. This information has now been translated for the characterization of muscle spindle response and neural response after spinal manipulation in collaboration with Dr. Reed at the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research. This research has the potential to change the landscape of chiropractic manipulation by providing scientific evidence on benefits of HVLA-SM.
